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Mar 16

Do You Want One Marshmallow Now? Or Two In 15 minutes?

“Have a little patience.” That’s something many people have told me very often in the past. And it’s true, used to be very impatient.

Too often, we don’t realize how bad impatience is. I was recently rereading some parts of Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers, my favorite book on conquering fear. And this sentence grabbed my attention:

“The biggest pitfall as you make your way through life is impatience.”

I’ve struggled with patience for most of my life. I always want things to happen now. There are many examples of that.

If you’re the same, you know that it’s a bad trait. You put a lot of pressure on yourself, and others. Unnecessary pressure. And impatience impacts all aspects of your life: Your health, relationships, and career.

When I started a business with my dad over six years ago, I was super impatient.

Why are they not buying?

We have to change our strategy.

We need a new website.

I need to go to more conferences.

We should advertise in trade magazines.

We have to hire someone to help with sales.

I probably changed my mind about something every single day. And I can tell you this from personal experience: Impatience wears you down.

So I forced myself to become more patient with everything. With people, myself, goals, progress, money, relationships.

I’m not saying those things don’t happen. But how many of these stories exist? Exactly. Not that many. And that’s why they get all the attention. But for most of us, other rules are at play.

We have responsibilities, rent, people to look after, relationship issues — you name it. Life is not easy. And if you want to make this life work for you, you have to be strategic about it. Be long-term focused. Because that’s how you get the most results.

Start slowly, get better, study the industry, don’t compare yourself to others, and then go all in when the time is right.

Because anything that’s worth it in life requires you to do tedious work that has ZERO short-term gratification.

Want to help people? Change their life? Make sure you got your act together first. And understand that most things have a payoff in the future.

Live today. But think about the future too.

It’s about balance. Living 100% in the moment forces you to take, take, take. You’ll probably get the one marshmallow.

But when you always think about the future, you miss out on life. Because we often do things ONLY because we expect a payoff in the future.

That’s why we get degrees we don’t need, stay at jobs we hate, and start relationships with people we don’t love.

I challenge you to find a balance. And that’s easier than you might think. All it takes is to do the right thing TODAY. Get a job you actually like and study things that you’re interested in.

Why do you want to achieve a certain goal? And why do you want it as fast as possible? And more importantly: Why do you want instant gratification?

Because we all know that having two marshmallows is better than having just one. And there are much more examples of delayed gratification experiments. We also know that the kids in those experiments who waited for the bigger reward performed better in life.

Why do we still take the marshmallow now? Because we’re impatient children.

And that’s okay. But at some point, we must grow up. It has nothing to do with age. It has everything to do with patience.